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Picky child eaters?

This is a tough one after knowing parents must deal with child tantrums and rebelliousness. I know my 3 sisters with children have spent effort along with their husbands, to broaden their children's palate and increase diverse range of veggies and fruits. They have done an admirable job so far.

But I have to say this: I eat meals with Asian Canadian-born folks born in the 1950's to 1960's. And have noticed: They have very broad palates and do eat a wide range of veggies, meats and some dairy. A greater tolerance for diverse spiciness. The only exception is actually desserts, most don't like overly sweet nor much dessert at all.

I do think taste is learned. A lot of it. I know of very young children, nearly babies, eat curry (my youngest nephew, niece) and sushi, bok choy.

I personally never ate ANY curry, chili dishes until after I graduated from university. My tastebuds was very narrow....very little British based /heavy European cooking. 90% was Cantonese cooking which what my mother does, and traditionally does not have any curry nor chili flavours. But I did develop strong enthusiasm for seafood early in life pre-kindergarten..becasue the cuisine incorporates more seafood than inland/northern Chinese cooking.

So I actually had no experience with Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, South Asian nor Carribbean dishes until in my mid-20's.

And I was born in Canada and raised my whole life here.

Nor did I like olive oil flavoured dishes until my 30's. I initially found olive oil distasteful. Now I eat all flavours...but probably because I want to try stuff.

I do believe a lot of it is learned, but some dislikes, I think, are inborn. My older son would/could not eat apples or pickles, because of the crunchiness. He would actually throw up from trying to eat the. He is still like this. He was an extremely picky eater as a small kid, and was always super skinny (still is). But, in high school, he had a lot of vegetarian friends, who introduced him to lots of ethnic foods that he would not eat at home. He now eats everything (except apples and pickles).

My first exposure to curry and chili based dishes was when I had a Malaysian room-mate midway through my university years. But we never shared cooking. My mother, to help me in their own low-income way, was she cut up meat and packaged in dinner size amounts. So I ended half of small freezer filled with packets of frozen chicken, pork and beef. Some fish. That was her "care" gift to me during university years. I made my own dinners (peasant Cantonese style dishes which a lot of restaurants don't serve because it uses steaming technique)...and enjoyed it. It was cooking, mindless therapy away from all that reading and studying.

I didn't even know about rice cookers until I met room mate. As a teen, I learned to cook rice in pot the "old fashioned way", on the stove.

Methinks the texture and taste/smell thing are such high influencing factors.
I'll eat carrots, but I find them..boring. So I end having tomatoes or butternut squash to get more carotene.
I agree with your friend nyc, you do have to take the attitude to like a broad range of foods. That helps a lot. Not the other way around....which I see way more often these days among children.

Interesting article, and makes a lot of sense. As someone who will likely be having kids in the next few years, it is nice to see that there is something parents can do to help avoid having their kids be picky eaters (I would find it extremely frustrating to have meal times always turn into a fight or have to limit what the rest of the family eats).

We are shifting to the method in the latest picky eating kids thinking with my daughter (2 in 3 months). After we did baby-led weaning (and she ate more "human food" than "baby food" while learning to eat), she is still settling in to some toddler habits (she would eat mac and cheese for every meal, I swear, but she also loves steamed edamame, blueberries, and some spicy foods). The BLW helped with not having to feed her ourselves from the ground up (we do sometimes shovel in yogurt to keep things clean), and being at "school" she only self-feeds there, too, from what's put in front of her.

Summary of the thinking is: "parents are responsible for what is presented to eat and the manner in which it is presented. Children are responsible for how much or even whether they eat." As a part of it, you generally include one food you know they will eat with foods they may or may not eat. Sometimes it's mom's favorite food night, sometimes dad's favorite food night. They learn to feel a little less stressed out about the food in front of them and end up more likely to try different things. As an example, for Christmas the family had roast beast (I had a stuffed pepper) with sweet potatoes and green beans, on my daughter's plate we put roast beast, sweet potatoes, a sample of my pepper, a side of mac and cheese, and green beans. She ate all of the mac, a couple green beans, a bite of sweet potatoes, and some pepper, but no meat (normal for her). One night she put a BUNCH of crinkle cut carrots in alongside some of her staple foods, which I haven't seen her do in a while. It also takes a few presentations for a new food to become a comfortable food, so you can't take turning their nose up at it once as a forever no, or a reluctance to try new things to mean forever no.

It's hard because sometimes she's a snacker (eats small meals and wants snacks), so we have to think defensively and plan ahead a little.

Mine is picky, but it's mostly a texture thing -- yay, autism!! He was less picky as a toddler, though the things he really liked when little he still likes. He'd eat broccoli every day. Still loves a bloody steak, good salmon steak, and gobbled up zucchini "noodles" the other night. He's generally been good with most veggies. He's trying new things, which is a step in the right direction. I just wish he didn't reach for processed carbs, first.

Mine is picky, but it's mostly a texture thing -- yay, autism!! He was less picky as a toddler, though the things he really liked when little he still likes. He'd eat broccoli every day. Still loves a bloody steak, good salmon steak, and gobbled up zucchini "noodles" the other night. He's generally been good with most veggies. He's trying new things, which is a step in the right direction. I just wish he didn't reach for processed carbs, first.

That's funny, I have some food texture issues, and I have problems with the texture of steak. I can eat hamburgers all day, but not steak.

As a baby, I wouldn't drink milk. The doctor told my mom to try skim and apparently that worked. I spent the first 45 years of my life avoiding 'creamy' things (whole milk, cream, yogurt, sour cream, mayo, cream cheese, cottage cheese, cheese cake, whipped cream, you name it). It was purely texture, not flavor. It even extended to avocados, peanut butter and egg yolks!

When I went paleo a few years back, I made the conscious choice to 'learn' to like many of those foods (mostly for the avocados and egg yolks) and sure enough, I got over the texture thing and now I love them...

But there is no way that would have happened as a child. I didn't have the patience to get past the revulsion!

We did have a rule in our house growing up that we were not allowed to say 'no' or that we didn't like some food without at least trying it. Even if it was just a bite. Both my brother and I got good at being willing to try anything and many times, we ended up liking things we didn't think we would (like liver and broccoli).

I was definitely picky, and most of my dislikes were texture (except veggies--my parents used to boil the living daylights out of everything, so they were sad and limp AND tasted awful). I also didn't particularly like milk. Still don't. I've gotten over some of them (runny egg yolks, avocado, pineapple, cherries), figured out how to cook so as to avoid texture/flavor issues (every vegetable ever, onions, beans (sort of)), and some are probably permanent (raisins, peas, summer squash).

My parents did the "three bites" rule. Mom was never too keen about enforcing it with lima beans, though. Turns out she didn't like them either!

This is a tough one after knowing parents must deal with child tantrums and rebelliousness. I know my 3 sisters with children have spent effort along with their husbands, to broaden their children's palate and increase diverse range of veggies and fruits. They have done an admirable job so far.

But I have to say this: I eat meals with Asian Canadian-born folks born in the 1950's to 1960's. And have noticed: They have very broad palates and do eat a wide range of veggies, meats and some dairy. A greater tolerance for diverse spiciness. The only exception is actually desserts, most don't like overly sweet nor much dessert at all.

I do think taste is learned. A lot of it. I know of very young children, nearly babies, eat curry (my youngest nephew, niece) and sushi, bok choy.

I personally never ate ANY curry, chili dishes until after I graduated from university. My tastebuds was very narrow....very little British based /heavy European cooking. 90% was Cantonese cooking which what my mother does, and traditionally does not have any curry nor chili flavours. But I did develop strong enthusiasm for seafood early in life pre-kindergarten..becasue the cuisine incorporates more seafood than inland/northern Chinese cooking.

So I actually had no experience with Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, South Asian nor Carribbean dishes until in my mid-20's.

And I was born in Canada and raised my whole life here.

Nor did I like olive oil flavoured dishes until my 30's. I initially found olive oil distasteful. Now I eat all flavours...but probably because I want to try stuff.

My original post. I remember strolling by a non-Asian woman who made a comment watching an Asian woman feeding her walking baby, abit of rice-like veggie sushi: "Ewwww, sushi?" I actually found her reaction amusing and revealing.

Honest, rice is one of the first carbs any traditional Asian diet, a baby is fed after graduating from drinking milk. I remember my mother feeding my baby siblings with grains of rice.

There are certain foods I will eat but don't buy much or any for home, I'm not as enthused by carrots, compared to butternut squash (if one needs to choose a carotene rich veggie). As a child I did used to eat certain livers (beef, chicken).... my mother actually made a steamed sliced liver dish with ginger root, soy sauce and sliced Chinese sausage. I loved it with rice.

Now only have liver pate at parties. I don't like the smell of fresh liver at the grocery store.

For instance, I never ate red beets until in my mid-20's. (Goulash soup was my first exposure. ) My mother just never cooked it. I think it was possibility of staining red beet juice she didn't want to deal with. (Cooking for 6 children, she can't be blamed for wanting to make things easier on herself. Same for deep fried food. It scared her to deal with pot of hot oil and too many young children in a small house around.)

Red radish is not part of Chinese cooking, but ironically I learned recently that's where red radish originated from. Must be central/northern China where it's colder...
As a child/teen, we seldom had fresh salads at home. Only lettuce and tomato slices. Again it wasn't familiar to my mother on how to prepare raw salads. So we often had lightly stir-fried veggies, clear veggie or meat broths and lightly boiled stuff. I know, the Western craze of fresh veggies, but there are techniques of healthy veggie cooking without boiling the nutrients out. I never quite understood much the whole raw food thing anyway.

So really, exposure to diverse ethnic dishes is sometimes, the best route ..and helps gives a child/teen more choices for cooking healthy .

As I said, even having grown up in Canada my whole life, there were a number of veggies I never had as a kid until I was an adult after leaving home. But that was counterbalanced by Asian based veggies (my father would buy from restaurant wholesaler where he worked), that were rarer 40 years ago in Canadian big city supermarkets.